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How Did African Americans Respond To The Complex Changes Of The 20th Century

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Black Americans had a turbulent 20th century defined by profound social, political, economic, and cultural shifts. From the aftermath of Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond, African Americans saw a multifaceted interaction between advancements and obstacles, tenacity and resistance. In this essay, I will examine how Black Americans dealt with the complex changes of the 20th century and how they responded to them, while paying particular attention to the ways in which identity and power relations shaped their experiences. Throughout the 20th century, Black Americans underwent significant transformations in social, economic, political, and cultural areas. Black people struggled with the legacy of slavery and the harsh Jim Crow …show more content…

Washington, and, Marcus Garvey spoke out in wanting more for their communities. Based on the lecture (American State and Progressivism) W.E.B Du Bois spoke out about wanting self-improvement for the race on top of full citizenship and equal rights. However, in spite of that, systematic racism and political corruption continued to impact every part of society, depriving Black Americans of their rights and dignity. Nonetheless, the 20th century also saw important turning points in the fight for racial equality and civil rights. Millions of Black Americans left the rural South for urban areas in the North during the Great Migration in an effort to avoid racial violence and pursue better opportunities. It states in (Our History) “Between 1900 and 1920 nearly 750,000 African Americans fled the discrimination and terrorism of the South and traveled north in search of greater freedom and new economic opportunities.” Opportunities for artistic expression and the development of a collective identity were made possible by the Harlem Renaissance and the arrival of Black intellectual and cultural

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The socioeconomic condition of African Americans underwent many superficial transformations from 1910 to 1930. Even though phenomena such as the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance cannot be discredited; the actual experience of the majority of African Americans remained stagnant. In other words, although the African American population experienced a notable shift from rural to urban and a subsequent cultural awakening in the time period between 1910 and 1930, they remained second-class citizens: confined to racial enclaves resulting from housing segregation and barred from the economic opportunities available to whites. African Americans were universally excluded from the social changes that the rest of the nation experienced during

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The Great Migration was a progression of over 6 million African Americans living in the rural South relocating to the North due to poor economy and harsh segregation laws. Big cities like Chicago and New York were overflowing, and migrants competed for jobs living space. With all struggle comes greatness. African American’s build themselves a place in society which created an entirely new urban culture that would influence the young

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The concept and discourse surrounding the battle for racial uplift has remained a pillar of Black activism and intellectual debates for over a century. While there have been a multitude of individuals involved in the struggle for racial uplift whose names never made it into the history books, there have also been a small number of individuals for whom history did capture. Two of the most famous members of the racial uplift battle were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. While both Washington and Dubois made it of paramount importance to improve the lives of Black people living in American society, they disagreed on the methodologies for how this racial uplift should be implemented. Through a comparative analysis of Booker T. Washington’s and W.E.B. Du Bois's theories on racial uplift, this paper contends that while both Du Bois and Washington highlight the importance of the power of individual agency, they differ markedly to the degree in which they emphasize multiple social institutions and the power of the social institutions to drive positive change in American Society.

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The profound effects of Progressivism had done little for African Americans, with very few that managed to gain a foothold by services and products to the black community. Especially in the South, where racism was much more prominent, and where many more white Americans possessed the ideology that blacks were inferior to whites. W.E.B. Du Bois was the very first African American to receive a PhD, and he published several books and essays, describing in great detail the numerous hurdles they were presented with. In his own journal, The Crisis, he displays an example after World War I, explaining the lack of recognition African Americans received for fighting “gladly and to the last drop of blood; for America and her highest ideals” (Document I). African Americans were kept extremely busy with “lynching, disenfranchisement, caste, brutality, and devilish insult” (Document I), fighting to protect and secure the rights they had already worked so hard to achieve.

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The migration was caused by the shortage of industrial workers in the north and west, due to World War 1, and segregationist laws in the south (History.com). African Americans were drawn to the northern cities by recruiters and black newspapers (History.com). The Great Migration helped began great civil rights battles because it brought blacks where political organization was easier. This migration turned the southern black into a city dweller and proved to be more complex than blacks migrating across the country (Marguiles). Although this migration was not the first, it was the most significant migration because of its primary pattern and huge influence on other

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Between that time, African American Families moved from the South to the North and to the West. Following the Civil War, many African Americans had packed up and migrated to urbanized areas like Chicago and New York. By 1920, almost 300,000 African Americans had moved away from the south, Harlem being a very popular destination for the traveling families. New arrivals found jobs in slaughterhouses, factories and foundries, but working conditions were strenuous to their bodies and sometimes dangerous. Many didn 't consider the amounts of people that would be migrating to New York and that made competition for living space harder.

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